G&P @ PAX East: Secret Files and Blood Bowl

oday Southpeak Interactive releases Secret Files: Tunguska for the Wii, and at PAX East on Saturday I was able to meet with SouthPeak's Aubrey Norris for a peek at the latest North American port of a point-and-click adventure that has been captivating fans of the classic genre since 2006.

Get your thinking cap: Secret Files rewards the perceptive and astute.Alternately controlling heroine Nina Kalenkov and colleague Max Gruber, players search locations from Berlin to Siberia, recovering clues, mastering puzzles, and solving the mysterious disappearance of Kalenkov's father, a scientist researching the 1908 Tunguska meteorite event.

Secret Files rewards the perceptive and astute: within moments, a player is surrounded by objects, people and environments with subtle — but vital — correspondence. Could the mortar on the workbench be filled with radiator water to some future end? What about that key left behind by the caretaker? As with any solid point-and-click, logic, common sense, and a little imagination go far.

Putting the ferrous in gridiron: the Warhammer universe's literalist fantasy football game.I also fiddled around with Blood Bowl, the Warhammer universe's literalist fantasy football game — released for tabletop in 1987 and as a video game for multiple platforms since, and coming out for PSP via Southpeak on April 13.

Featuring single-player or head-to-head multiplayer, Blood Bowl arranges two teams from one of eight unique races plucked — then jovially removed — from Warhammer canon. Turn-based play allows for gridiron contests incorporating dice-roll resolutions; and a passel of twists on the sport, from sidestepping the disabled list with apothecaries, to bribing the referee, to sneaking a goblin chainsaw onto the field, make Blood Bowl a very amusing extension of the brand.

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